I Will Repay eBook

The room into which she had entered was gay and cheerful-looking
with its dainty chintz hangings and graceful, elegant
pieces of furniture. The young girl looked up,
as a kindly voice said to her, from out the depths
of a capacious armchair:

“Come in, come in, my dear, and close the door
behind you! Did those wretches attack you?
Never mind. Paul will speak to them. Come
here, my dear, and sit down; there’s no cause
now for fear.”

Without a word the young girl came forward.
She seemed now to be walking in a dream, the chintz
hangings to be swaying ghostlike around her, the yells
and shrieks below to come from the very bowels of the
earth.

The old lady continued to prattle on. She had
taken the girl’s hand in hers, and was gently
forcing her down on to a low stool beside her armchair.
She was talking about Paul, and said something about
Anne Mie, and then about the National Convention,
and those beasts and savages, but mostly about Paul.

The noise outside had subsided. The girl felt
strangely sick and tired. Her head seemed to
be whirling round, the furniture to be dancing round
her; the old lady’s face looked at her through
a swaying veil, and then—­and then...

Tired Nature was having her way at last; she folded
the quivering young body in her motherly arms, and
wrapped the aching senses beneath her merciful mantle
of unconsciousness.

CHAPTER II

Citizen-Deputy.

When, presently, the young girl awoke, with a delicious
feeling of rest and well-being, she had plenty of
leisure to think.

So, then, this was his house! She was actually
a guest, a rescued protege, beneath the roof of Citoyen
Deroulede.

He had dragged her from the clutches of the howling
mob which she had provoked; his mother had made her
welcome, a sweet-faced, young girl scarce out of her
teens, sad-eyed and slightly deformed, had waited
upon her and made her happy and comfortable.

Juliette de Marny was in the house of the man, whom
she had sworn before her God and before her father
to pursue with hatred and revenge.

Ten years had gone by since then.

Lying upon the sweet-scented bed which the hospitality
of the Derouledes had provided for her, she seemed
to see passing before her the spectres of these past
ten years—­the first four, after her brothers
death, until the old Duc de Marny’s body slowly
followed his soul to its grave.

After that last glimmer of life beside the deathbed
of his son, the old Duc had practically ceased to
be. A mute, shrunken figure, he merely existed;
his mind vanished, his memory gone, a wreck whom Nature
fortunately remembered at last, and finally took away
from the invalid chair which had been his world.

Then came those few years at the Convent of the Ursulines.
Juliette had hoped that she had a vocation; her whole
soul yearned for a secluded, a religious, life, for
great barriers of solemn vows and days spent in prayer
and contemplation, to interpose between herself and
the memory of that awful night when, obedient to her
father’s will, she had made the solemn oath
to avenge her brother’s death.